Tag Archives: Murder/Manslaughter

US

Video of Paul Pelosi Attack Shows Intruder Striking Former House Speaker’s Husband With a Hammer

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Video and audio evidence from the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband was released Friday, showing for the first time the sequence of events that ended with 82 year-old

Paul Pelosi

being knocked unconscious with a hammer as police officers tackled his assailant.

Some of the evidence was previously shown in court proceedings in the case against David DePape, who is being held without bond on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and elder abuse in the Oct. 28 attack on Mr. Pelosi. Mr. DePape has pleaded not guilty.

The evidence released Friday, which includes police body-camera footage, is the first opportunity for the public to see and hear in detail the events leading up to and including a predawn assault, which focused attention on violence aimed at politicians in the U.S.

Its release came after a coalition of news organizations filed a motion earlier this month requesting to see the evidence, which prosecutors had previously withheld. Judge Stephen Murphy of San Francisco Superior Court granted the motion Wednesday.

Adam Lipson, a San Francisco deputy public defender representing Mr. DePape, said it was, “a terrible mistake to release this evidence, and in particular the video. Releasing this footage is disrespectful to Mr. Pelosi, and serves no purpose except to feed the public desire for spectacle and violence.” 

He also said the release would make it hard for his client to get a fair trial.

Mrs. Pelosi, who was speaker of the House of Representatives until earlier this month, said Friday that she had no intention of watching the newly released evidence and thanked people for their prayers.

The video begins with footage from a Capitol Police camera trained on the Pelosi home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood; it shows Mr. DePape—wearing shorts and a jacket—walking up to a rear entrance at 3:04 a.m., taking out a claw hammer from a bag and putting on gloves.

After looking around several times, he initially pushed the head of the hammer against the glass in a set of french doors. When it wouldn’t open, he swung with full force 16 times until the glass shattered and then pushed his way through, shoulder first.

The next evidence released is audio of Mr. Pelosi’s call to 911 a few minutes later, in which he tried to convey to a dispatcher that he needed help. 

Mr. Pelosi told Mr. DePape he had to use the bathroom and called 911 from a phone charging there, a person with knowledge of the incident previously said.

“I guess I called by mistake,” Mr. Pelosi said at first to the operator. After she asked if he needed help, he told her, “There’s a gentleman here just waiting for my wife to come back,

Nancy Pelosi.

She’s not going to be here for days, so I guess we’ll have to wait.”

When asked by the 911 operator if he knew the man, Mr. Pelosi said he didn’t. Mr. DePape can then be heard saying, “My name is David. I’m a friend of theirs.” 

Mr. Pelosi then hung up after saying, “He wants me to get the hell off the phone.”

Body camera footage of two San Francisco police officers dispatched to the home subsequently show them knocking on the front door. Mr. Pelosi opened the door, looking disheveled and not wearing pants, with his hand on a hammer that Mr. DePape is holding. After an officer asks, “What’s going on, man?”, Mr. DePape answered “Everything’s good.” 

An officer then ordered him to “drop the hammer,” after which the suspect answered “Um, nope” and began struggling with the smaller Mr. Pelosi for control. He quickly pinned the older man’s right arm to free the hammer and then raised it over his head to strike Mr. Pelosi. 

A door obscures Mr. Pelosi at this point, but the footage then shows the officers tackling Mr. DePape and handcuffing him as he lies on the floor, partially atop Mr. Pelosi, who appears to be unconscious.

Mr. Pelosi was treated at a local trauma center and later released home, where his wife said he faced a long recovery. Mrs. Pelosi said Friday that her husband is making progress on his recovery, but it will take more time.

—Natalie Andrews contributed to this article.

Write to Jim Carlton at Jim.Carlton@wsj.com

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US

Iowa Shooting That Left Two Dead Was Likely Gang-Related, Des Moines Police Say

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Police are investigating a possible gang-related motive after two students were shot dead at an Iowa education center for at-risk youth.

Two male students, 18 years old and 16 years old, were fatally shot when a suspect pulled out a 9mm handgun and began firing just before 1 p.m. local time, a spokesperson for Des Moines Police said.

The gunfire broke out inside a common area used by the Starts Right Here education program in Des Moines. The organization’s president and founder

William Holmes,

a rapper who performs under the name Will Keeps, was injured in the shooting and remains hospitalized in a serious condition.

“The incident was definitely targeted, it was not random. There was nothing random about this,” Sgt.

Paul Parizek

said.

Mr. Walls and the two student victims were affiliated with rival gangs, he added.

Police later charged 18-year-old Des Moines resident Preston Walls with two counts of first-degree murder, along with attempted murder and gang participation. It was not clear who was serving as Mr. Walls’s attorney.

Two other suspects remain in custody.

First responders performed CPR on the victims found at the scene, according to Mr. Parizek. The students were brought to a local hospital but couldn’t be saved, he said.

The Des Moines incident comes after a mass shooting in California over the weekend left 11 people dead and another nine injured. Police are looking at a troubled romantic relationship as a possible motive for the state’s deadliest mass shooting in years. Also over the weekend, a nightclub shooting in Baton Rouge, La., injured over 10.

Des Moines police said Mr. Walls entered a common area at the Starts Right Here building where all three victims were. Mr. Holmes attempted to escort him from the area when Mr. Walls pulled away and began to shoot, Des Moines police said.

Police responding to reports of gunfire saw a suspicious vehicle leaving the area. The automobile was pulled over about 20 minutes later, roughly 2 miles from the education center, police said.

Two other people stayed in the car while Mr. Walls ran from the vehicle. A police dog helped track him down, Mr. Parizek said. Mr. Walls was taken into custody and a 9mm handgun was found nearby. Its ammunition magazine had a capacity of 31 rounds and contained three, police said. 

The Starts Right Here website said it works with at-risk youth in the Des Moines Public Schools. The nonprofit has Des Moines Police Department Chief

Dana Wingert

on its board of directors and Iowa Gov.

Kim Reynolds

on its advisory board. 

“I’ve seen first-hand how hard Will Keeps and his staff work to help at-risk kids through this alternative education program. My heart breaks for them, these kids and their families,” Ms. Reynolds, a Republican, said in a statement. 

Mr. Parizek said the program deals with children “with a variety of challenges, some that many of us can’t wrap our brain around.”

Write to Talal Ansari at talal.ansari@wsj.com

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Appeared in the January 24, 2023, print edition as ‘Shooting Kills Two Students In Iowa.’

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World

Kherson Residents Tell of Torture, Abuse During Russian Occupation

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KHERSON, Ukraine—Residents of the southern city of Kherson told of torture and killing by Russian soldiers during Moscow’s nine-month occupation of the Ukrainian city, while world leaders grappled with the fallout of a missile crash in neighboring Poland during a wave of Russian strikes across Ukraine.

Russia unleashed one of the biggest barrages of the war on Tuesday, firing 96 missiles at Ukrainian cities after being forced to withdraw from Kherson last week in a major blow for Moscow.

Ukrainian air defenses shot down 77 missiles and 10 Iranian-made drones, according to the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces.

A missile landed in a Polish village near the Ukrainian border, killing two farmworkers and raising fears of a wider conflagration.

Top North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials said Wednesday that the missile was likely a Russian-made weapon fired by a Ukrainian air-defense system, and that there was no evidence it was directed there intentionally. Polish President

Andrzej Duda

said Wednesday that Ukraine was defending itself and placed blame on Russia.

Preliminary U.S. assessments also indicated the missile that landed in Poland was from a Ukrainian air-defense system, according to two senior Western officials, while President Biden said at the G-20 summit in Indonesia that it was unlikely to have been fired from Russia.

A residential building in Kyiv that was hit by fragments of a missile during a Russian barrage on Tuesday.



Photo:

Serhii Korovayny for The Wall Street Journal

Preliminary U.S. assessments indicate the missile that landed in Poland was from a Ukrainian air-defense system.



Photo:

KACPER PEMPEL/REUTERS

Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

blamed Russia late Tuesday, saying Russian missiles hit Poland, while the Russian government denied any responsibility for the strikes.

While investigations continued into the origin of the missile, repair crews in Ukraine were working to fix infrastructure damaged in Tuesday’s attack, which left about 10 million Ukrainians without electricity. The missiles also hit residential buildings near Kyiv’s government district and disrupted communications across the country.

The head of Ukraine’s electricity-transmission-system operator, Ukenergo, told a Ukrainian news broadcast that the coming days would be difficult, warning emergency shutdowns were necessary to stabilize the grid.

Russia has increasingly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as it faces setbacks on the battlefield. During their retreat from Kherson, Russian forces knocked out power, heating, water and cell reception in the city.

Meanwhile, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Russian troops were fortifying defensive lines on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, which became the new front line in the south following the Russian withdrawal. Ukrainian forces shelled Russian positions on the eastern bank of the river and in the area of the Kinburn Spit on Tuesday, according to the southern operational command.

Less than a week since jubilant residents welcomed the return of Ukrainian troops to Kherson, residents were taking stock of the occupation.

Russians detained and abused people in Kherson during their occupation of the city, residents say.



Photo:

VALENTYN OGIRENKO/REUTERS

Vitaliy Shevchenko, 66, said Russian troops had shot his neighbor multiple times in the chest after he insulted one of them.

Mykola Makarenko said he knew from the start of the occupation he was likely to be a target. He had served in the Ukrainian army, fighting against Russian-backed forces in the east of the country in a conflict that has dragged on since 2014.

The 44-year-old said he couldn’t flee Kherson because a friend had seen his name on a list of wanted men at a Russian checkpoint. He spent the subsequent months staying with different friends, moving every few weeks and avoiding Russian checkpoints. In August, however, Russians stopped the car Mr. Makarenko was traveling in and detained him.

For the next 16 days, Mr. Makarenko said he was tortured by Russian soldiers who broke his jaw and four of his ribs, and scratched a letter Z onto his leg with a knife.

“I’m waiting to see my family,” he said. “Then I’ll rejoin the military and get vengeance.”

Following the recapture of Kherson, Mr. Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had uncovered evidence of hundreds of war crimes. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed such accusations.

Kherson residents gathered to receive aid in the city’s central square this week.



Photo:

Virginie NGUYEN HOANG for The Wall Street Journal

Lina Naumova, a popular TikTok blogger, said she continued to post messages like “Kherson will never be Russian” for months after the occupation began. On Aug. 23, an unmarked sedan pulled up outside her home and three Russian soldiers began searching for Ukrainian symbols and weapons.

Then they put her in the car with them. On the way, she said, they put a bag over her head. She thinks they took her to a local jail, but isn’t sure.

For 11 days, Ms. Naumova said she was held in isolation and repeatedly questioned about transactions on her bank card. The soldiers demanded to know who else published anti-Russian blogs from Kherson.

As they searched her phone, she saw a conversation she had with a Ukrainian newspaper. She grabbed the phone and quickly deleted it, she said. In response, the soldiers tied her hands behind her back, poured water on her and attached cables to her fingers, though they didn’t turn the electricity on.

They told Ms. Naumova, 67, they wouldn’t beat a woman her age, but made loud noises around her and screamed at her, before moving her to a basement. Once, a soldier slapped her, she said.

After 11 days, she was taken to a room and forced to record an apology to everyone she offended, saying she was sorry for criticizing the Russian army and that Crimea is Russia. She had to record it five times before they were satisfied, she said. Then they took her home, but kept her passport.

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com and Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com

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World

More Than 130 People Dead in Cable Bridge Collapse in India’s Gujarat State

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The Indian state government of Gujarat opened a criminal inquiry into the agency tasked with maintaining a historic cable bridge after the popular attraction collapsed on Sunday under the weight of hundreds of visitors, killing more than 130 people.

Harsh Sanghavi, the state’s home minister, told reporters that an inquiry under criminal provisions relating to manslaughter was opened into a local company. The bridge, which was built in the late 19th century, reopened to the public last week after months for repairs.

Mr. Sanghavi didn’t name the company. Several Indian news outlets reported that a local industrial company known as Oreva was in charge of the bridge’s maintenance and repairs.

Ashok Yadav, a senior official with the Gujarat state police, told reporters late Monday that nine people had been arrested in connection with the probe into the bridge’s collapse. The arrested people included two managers of the Oreva company, two ticket clerks at the bridge that collapsed, two bridge-repair contractors and three security guards tasked with regulating the entry of people on the bridge, according to Mr. Yadav.

Calls to Oreva weren’t answered on Monday and it didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.

Mr. Yadav said police could make more arrests as the inquiry continues.

“Our effort is to set a strong example through this whole process,” he said.

Rescue operations continued into Monday, with 170 people pulled from the waters of the Machchhu river that the bridge spanned, the state disaster management agency said.

Videos shared by television channels and on social media showed people in the water clinging to portions of the collapsed bridge and trying to climb out.

The death toll could continue to rise after a suspension bridge collapsed in the western Indian state of Gujarat, killing more than 130 people. The popular tourist attraction was crowded as hundreds of people visited the area to celebrate holidays including Diwali. Photo: AP Photo/Ajit Solanki

Tushar Daftary, a local member of Lions Clubs International community service group, who was among those helping with rescue operations last night, said many people were visiting family in the area due public holidays in the past week, including Diwali and Gujarati new year. That meant more people than usual visited the bridge over the weekend, according to Mr. Daftary.

A local news report said some visitors expressed concerns to ticket agents that some people were shaking the overcrowded bridge.

Videos posted on social media platform Twitter showed the bridge—which sways when people walk on it—thronged with visitors, some of whom appeared to be vigorously shaking its suspension cables. Users of

Meta Platforms Inc.’s

Facebook in India and outside the country, however, were unable to view posts with the Gujarat hashtag for several hours on Monday.

“Keeping our community safe,” a message said, when users clicked through to a page that would normally display a stream of videos, photos and news reports related to the state or the bridge collapse. It added that the posts were temporarily hidden as “some content in those posts goes against our Community Standards.”

“The hashtag was blocked in error,” a Meta spokeswoman said Tuesday, adding that it has since been restored.

She declined to say what material may have violated the platform’s standards, which don’t allow violent and graphic content, hate speech, and other types of material. India is Facebook’s largest market by users. Meanwhile, videos of Halloween revelers being crushed in South Korea over the weekend remained visible throughout Monday via a hashtag for the world Seoul.

After The Wall Street Journal sought comment from Facebook Monday, posts with the Gujarat hashtag became visible again, with the top post a video from an Indian TV network showing the moment the bridge collapsed.

The state has said it would award the equivalent of nearly $4,900 to families of those who died in the disaster, as well as give compensation to the injured. Indian Prime Minister

Narendra Modi,

who governed the state for more than a decade as he cemented his political rise, also unveiled compensation for victims and expressed his sorrow.

The tragedy cast a shadow over Mr. Modi’s three-day visit to the state that started Sunday, which is intended to showcase development projects ahead of elections there that are due later this year. The prime minister has been leading a renewed push to draw more factories to India and to create more jobs. In the hours before the bridge collapse, Mr. Modi presided over the start of construction on an aircraft manufacturing facility in the state in partnership with Europe’s Airbus SE, hailing it as a step forward for the country’s goal of becoming a global manufacturing hub.

But India’s efforts to attract more manufacturing and create more jobs have often faced challenges from concerns over the country’s dilapidated infrastructure and safety lapses, a worry that is likely to be made worse by Sunday’s disaster.

—Newley Purnell contributed to this article.

Write to Krishna Pokharel at krishna.pokharel@wsj.com and Tripti Lahiri at tripti.lahiri@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Harsh Sanghavi is the home minister for India’s Gujarat state. An earlier version of this article misspelled his surname as Sanghvi on second reference. (Corrected on Nov. 1)

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World

Suspect Confessed to Killing British Journalist Dom Phillips in Amazon, Brazilian Police Say

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ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil—A fisherman confessed to killing and dismembering British journalist

Dom Phillips

and his guide,

Bruno Pereira,

deep in the Amazon rainforest, Brazilian police said Wednesday.

Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, 41 years old, admitted to killing the pair on June 5 as they made their way alone up the Itaquaí River just after sunrise, police said in a press conference in the Amazonian city of Manaus. They said they suspect Mr. Costa de Oliveira to have links to the local drug gangs after arresting him with military-grade ammunition last week.

Police said they are in the process of collecting body parts deep in the forest after Mr. Costa de Oliveira led them to the spot where he said he buried the pair’s remains. Mr. Costa de Oliveira’s brother, Oseney, has also been arrested in connection to the case and a third suspect is under investigation, police said.

The announcement comes after a 10-day search for the men in a case that has prompted international outrage, with the British government and the United Nations joining a host of celebrities to put pressure on Brazilian authorities to step up their search efforts.

“This tragic outcome puts an end to the anguish of not knowing Dom and Bruno’s whereabouts,” said the journalist’s Brazilian wife Alessandra Sampaio in a statement shared on social media.

Tests on a portion of stomach discovered on the banks of the river in the search area last Friday showed it was human, authorities said, but they didn’t confirm whether it belonged to either of the two men. Mr. Phillips and Mr. Pereira were shot, according to a person close to the investigation. Police didn’t say what kind of weapon was used.

Mr. Phillips, a 57-year-old veteran correspondent who had lived in Brazil since 2007 and written regularly for the Guardian newspaper, had been reporting in the remote Javari Valley here near the border with Peru on conflicts between indigenous communities and illegal poachers, fishers, loggers and drug traffickers. He told friends it was the last big trip he needed to make to complete an upcoming book.

Brazilian soldiers searched for the missing men in a remote and lawless part of the Amazon rainforest near the border with Peru.



Photo:

BRUNO KELLY/REUTERS

Some of Mr. Costa de Oliveira’s family members said in interviews they believe he is innocent, denying he had connections to local gangs. Francisco Freitas, 67, Amarildo’s stepfather, said his stepson had returned from questioning with injuries, leading the family to believe he was tortured during questioning. Police denied the allegations.

“He was a good boy, his mother is beside herself,” said Mr. Freitas.

A swath of largely impenetrable rainforest the size of Portugal, the Javari Valley is home to the largest number of uncontacted indigenous tribes in the world, according to Funai, Brazil’s national indigenous institute.

It has also become the scene of violent crime that environmentalists, tribesmen and officials say has worsened under the administration of President

Jair Bolsonaro.

Located in the heart of South America, its networks of rivers and jungle are hard to patrol—and easy for groups trafficking in illegal fish or timber or cocaine to maneuver in.

While cutting funding for environmental and indigenous-protection agencies, the right-wing populist leader has also eased gun-ownership laws, government figures show, emboldening the region’s criminals, according to indigenous groups, human rights organizations and crime researchers.

A vigil on Monday took place in Brasília, near the headquarters of Brazil’s national indigenous institute, following the disappearance of British journalist Dom Phillips and his guide Bruno Pereira.



Photo:

ADRIANO MACHADO/REUTERS

Mr. Phillips set out from the riverside community of São Rafael near the border with Peru on June 5 in a small motorboat with Mr. Pereira, a top indigenous expert. They had completed their work and were heading back on the Itaquaí River here to Atalaia do Norte, a town of around 20,000. Then they vanished.

Police said Mr. Costa de Oliveira had confessed to sinking the men’s boat after the crime, removing the motor and weighing it down with mud.

Police said they are investigating several possible motives in the case. Mr. Pereira, 41, a father of three and longtime defender of indigenous communities, had been leading efforts to clamp down on illegal fishing in the region. He had many enemies as a result, including Mr. Costa de Oliveira, who had already threatened to kill him, police and indigenous leaders said.

The day before Mssrs. Phillips and Pereira went missing, indigenous leaders said they also saw the journalist take a photo of Amarildo Costa de Oliveira as he and other men sped past, brandishing their shotguns at them.

“It’s possible they felt threatened,” said Guilherme Torres, one of the police officials leading the investigation from Manaus, the state capital of Amazonas.

Residents of Atalaia do Norte watched as the bodies of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were brought into port and placed in a police pickup truck.



Photo:

Tommaso Protti for the Wall Street Journal

There were other dangers. Drug gangs here, which ferry cocaine south from Peru and Colombia, typically dismember their victims’ bodies before dumping them in the river to be eaten by fish, police said. The stomach was only found, Mr. Torres said, because the air caused it to float.

“It’s a region that is out of our control, a corridor for drug trafficking,” said Mr. Torres. Gangs easily recruit poor local fishermen to provide accommodation in remote areas or to transport drugs down the river, he said.

“Fishermen know the river the best,” said Mr. Torres. “Who is better to transport drugs than a fisherman?”

Mr. Bolsonaro’s critics have accused him of belittling Mssrs. Phillips and Pereira by referring to their trip as an “adventure” in recent days. He also said anyone traveling in the region should do so with armed guards, implying the men were reckless to set out alone.

Mr. Bolsonaro has said his administration is committed to combating illegal activity in the region, adding that indigenous communities should be allowed to develop their land rather than live in poverty “like animals in a zoo.”

The region’s criminal organizations are so powerful that they have infiltrated the upper echelons of the region’s politics, said Virgilio Viana, former environment secretary for the state of Amazonas.

Many people disappear in the region, although their cases are rarely investigated or reported nationally, said Mr. Viana, who now leads the Foundation for Amazon Sustainability, a nonprofit based in Manaus.

“There are tens of Doms and Brunos killed every year,” he said.

—Vinod Sreeharsha and Paulo Trevisani contributed to this article.

Write to Luciana Magalhaes at Luciana.Magalhaes@wsj.com and Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com

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US

Uvalde Shooter Fired Outside School for 12 Minutes Before Entering

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UVALDE, Texas—Local residents voiced anger Thursday about the time it took to end the mass shooting at an elementary school here, as police laid out a fresh timeline that showed the gunman entered the building unobstructed after lingering outside for 12 minutes firing shots.

Victor Escalon, a regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in a briefing that the now-deceased gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, lingered outside Robb Elementary School for 12 minutes firing shots before walking into the school and barricading himself in a classroom where he killed 19 children and two teachers.

Mr. Escalon said he couldn’t say why no one stopped Ramos from entering the school during that time Tuesday. Most of the shots Ramos fired came during the first several minutes after he entered the school, Mr. Escalon said.

People who arrived at the school while Ramos locked himself in a classroom, or saw videos of police waiting outside, were furious.

“The police were doing nothing,” said Angeli Rose Gomez, who after learning about the shooting drove 40 miles to Robb Elementary, where her children are in second and third grade. “They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”

Mr. Escalon said officers inside the school were evacuating students and school employees from the premises, as well as calling for backup. “There’s a lot going on,” he said.

Department of Public Safety officials previously said an armed school officer confronted Ramos as he arrived at the school. Mr. Escalon said Thursday that information was incorrect and no one encountered Ramos as he arrived at the school. “There was not an officer readily available and armed,” Mr. Escalon said.

Ramos shot his grandmother Tuesday morning and drove her truck to Robb Elementary School, crashing the vehicle into a nearby ditch at 11:28 a.m., according to the timeline laid out by Mr. Escalon. He then began shooting at people at a funeral home across the street, prompting a 911 call reporting a gunman at the school at 11:30. Ramos climbed a chain-link fence about 8 feet high onto school grounds and began firing before walking inside, unimpeded, at 11:40. The first police arrived on the scene at 11:44 and exchanged gunfire with Ramos, who locked himself in a fourth-grade classroom. There, he killed the students and teachers.

A Border Patrol tactical team went into the school an hour later, around 12:40 p.m., and was able to get into the classroom and kill Ramos, Mr. Escalon said.

Ms. Gomez, a farm supervisor, said that she was one of numerous parents waiting outside the school who began encouraging—first politely, and then with more urgency—police and other law enforcement to enter the school sooner. After a few minutes, she said, U.S. Marshals put her in handcuffs, telling her she was being arrested for intervening in an active investigation.

Photos: Deadly Mass Shooting at Texas Elementary School

An 18-year-old man opened fire inside an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 students and two adults

A family visited a makeshift memorial on May 26 in Uvalde, Texas.

Tamir Kalifa for The Wall Street Journal

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A family visited a makeshift memorial on May 26 in Uvalde, Texas.

Tamir Kalifa for The Wall Street Journal

Ms. Gomez said she convinced local Uvalde police officers whom she knew to persuade the marshals to set her free.

A spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service said deputy marshals never placed anyone in handcuffs while securing Robb Elementary’s perimeter. “Our deputy marshals maintained order and peace in the midst of the grief-stricken community that was gathering around the school,” he said.

Ms. Gomez described the scene as frantic. She said she saw a father tackled and thrown to the ground by police and a third pepper-sprayed. Once freed from her cuffs, Ms. Gomez made her distance from the crowd, jumped the school fence, and ran inside to grab her two children. She sprinted out of the school with them.

Videos circulated on social media Wednesday and Thursday of frantic family members trying to get access to Robb Elementary as the attack was unfolding, some of them yelling at police who blocked them from entering.

“Shoot him or something!” a woman’s voice can be heard yelling on a video, before a man is heard saying about the officers, “They’re all just [expletive] parked outside, dude. They need to go in there.”

The videos were collected by Storyful, a social-media research company owned by

News Corp,

parent company of The Wall Street Journal.

Bob Estrada lives directly across the street from the school, which his grandson attends. The 77-year-old said he and his wife walked outside when they heard gunshots and were confused why the police who arrived didn’t immediately enter.

“They are trying to cover something up,” he said of the information released Thursday. “I think the cops were waiting for backup because they didn’t want to go into the school.”

Esmeralda Bravo cried while holding a photo of her granddaughter, Nevaeh, one of the Robb Elementary School shooting victims.



Photo:

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

The Uvalde Police Department couldn’t be reached for comment.

Asked at the press conference why law enforcement weren’t able to respond in the initial 12 minutes Ramos was outside the school, Mr. Escalon said that was part of the investigation. “Our job is to report the facts and have answers. We’re not there yet,” he said.

Mr. Escalon also said police aren’t sure how Ramos was able to enter the school building. “We will find out more about why it was unlocked—or maybe it was locked—but right now it appears that it was unlocked,” he said.

Jay Martin, who lives four blocks from Robb Elementary and walked there after hearing gunfire, said the police’s timeline doesn’t match what he saw in person and online.

“Nothing is adding up,” he said. “People are just really frustrated because no one is coming out and telling us the real truth of what went down.”

More than 1,000 people gathered at an arena in Uvalde, Texas to remember the 21 victims, most of them children, who were killed by a gunman at Robb Elementary School. It was the deadliest school shooting in a decade. Photo: Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

But Danny Ruiz, whose great-niece died in the attack, said he arrived at the school after hearing gunfire and felt grateful for the police response.

“The Border Patrol agent who took him out, to me, that guy is a hero,” said Mr. Ruiz, 51.

After the confrontation at the school ended with Ramos dead, school buses began to arrive to transport students from the school, according to Ms. Gomez. She said she saw police use a Taser on a local father who approached the bus to collect his child.

“They didn’t do that to the shooter, but they did that to us. That’s how it felt,” Ms. Gomez said.

Thursday’s expressions of frustration came after more than 1,000 people from this grieving city gathered Wednesday night for a prayer vigil.

“God is here with us tonight,” Pastor Tony Gruben, of Baptist Temple Church, told the people gathered at the Uvalde County Fairplex. “God still loves you and God still loves those little children.”

Local residents packed the stands, spilled into the aisles and stood on the dirt rodeo floor where the ministers preached from a stage under flags of Texas and the U.S. White cowboy hats dotted the audience along with scores of maroon T-shirts that said “Uvalde Coyotes,” the high school mascot.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Uvalde on Sunday to grieve with the community, the White House said.

—Alicia A. Caldwell and Sadie Gurman contributed to this article.

Write to Elizabeth Findell at Elizabeth.Findell@wsj.com, Rob Copeland at rob.copeland@wsj.com and Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com

The Texas School Shooting

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Entertainment

Alec Baldwin Seen on Video Rehearsing With Gun Before Fatal Shooting on ‘Rust’

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Santa Fe, N.M.—New camera footage released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office Monday shows Alec Baldwin whipping out a revolver and pointing it toward the camera two times while rehearsing for a scene in the Western movie “Rust.”

The footage was taken from the movie set on the day Mr. Baldwin discharged a live round from a revolver, killing Halyna Hutchins, the 42-year-old cinematographer for the low-budget Western. The film’s director, Joel Souza, was also wounded in the incident.

The footage is one of dozens of videos and other images released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. The files were released Monday in response to public records requests by media outlets. They include body-camera footage from sheriff’s deputies responding to the incident and investigators’ interviews with key witnesses as well as text message exchanges.

Video from a deputy’s body camera shows a chaotic scene in the moments after the shooting. Emergency responders attempted to save Ms. Hutchins as she lay quietly on the floor of the set’s Old West church. Nearby, Mr. Souza, also on the ground, groaned in pain. Deputies told crew members to stay out of the church because it was a crime scene. Ms. Hutchins was put into an ambulance as a medical helicopter landed nearby.

A shaken-looking Mr. Baldwin sat outside the church and asked someone for a cigarette, the released video shows. He asked if Ms. Hutchins and Mr. Souza had been taken away for treatment and told a deputy he didn’t know how many people were in the church when the shooting occurred.

Text messages also released from the sheriff’s office Monday shed light on how crew workers responded immediately following the shooting and in the subsequent days. In one message sent three days after the shooting, Sarah Zachry, the prop master on “Rust,” commented on how Mr. Baldwin preferred to use real guns and props on set, and referenced a time he didn’t want to act with a “rubber knife.”

“He always wanted his real gun,” she said in a message to an acquaintance who didn’t work on the film.

Two days after the shooting, Ms. Zachry texted Seth Kenney, the film’s weapons supplier, according to the released material, “I talked to Alec, and he’s having a difficult time recalling things like most of us.”

Ms. Zachry also texted with Mr. Baldwin directly in the days following the shooting.

“The sheriff’s dept still will not tell me that I won’t be charged w something,” Mr. Baldwin texted Ms. Zachry on Dec. 2. “But they seem to be getting very close to the truth of what happened.”

Ms. Zachry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Baldwin’s lawyer Luke Nikas didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In a television interview with ABC News that aired in December, Mr. Baldwin claimed he never pulled the trigger but acknowledged cocking the hammer and releasing it while practicing drawing the gun from its holster.

“I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off,” Mr. Baldwin said.

Sheriff’s investigators haven’t yet completed their probe into the Oct. 21 shooting, which includes determining how live rounds ended up on the set. Investigators have interviewed a range of people involved in the movie, including Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer in charge of guns on set, assistant director David Halls, Mr. Kenney and Mr. Baldwin.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said several components of the investigation are pending, “including FBI firearm and ballistic forensics along with DNA and latent fingerprint analysis, Office of the New Mexico Medical Examiner findings report and the analysis of Mr. Alec Baldwin’s phone data.”

Another text message exchange released Monday between Ms. Gutierrez Reed and Mr. Kenney from when she worked on a different movie, shows Ms. Gutierrez Reed talking about wanting to use live rounds. While working on a movie called “The Old Way” in August 2021, she asks Mr. Kenney if she can “shoot hot rounds out of the trap door…like a pretty big load of actual ammunition.”

Mr. Kenney in response warned her to never shoot live ammunition and only use blanks. “It’s a serious mistake, always ends in tears,” Mr. Kenney texted. Ms. Gutierrez Reed replied: “Good to know, I’m still gonna shoot mine tho.”

Jason Bowles, an attorney for Ms. Gutierrez Reed, said Monday that during filming of “The Old Way,” Ms. Gutierrez Reed had wanted to fire a special historical gun, away from the movie set when she was off work, but never fired it. “As armorer, she wanted to be familiar with the historical weapon and how it operated but never intended on shooting during production or on set.” He said she has never brought live rounds on set or fired live rounds on set.

In written summaries released Monday of an interview with investigators after the “Rust” shooting, Ms. Gutierrez Reed said one morning, she had planned to work with Mr. Baldwin on using guns, but when he showed up, he didn’t say anything about a lesson. She told other crew members she was concerned “about him practicing because of the draw with the holster,” according to a summary.

At one point, Mr. Baldwin got mad when he tried to draw the gun and it got caught on his microphone, Ms. Gutierrez Reed told the investigators. She reached out to Mr. Baldwin’s assistant to get him additional training, “to which she didn’t hear much back other than he would speak with Alec,” according to the interview summary.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff said in October that a bullet recovered from “Rust” director Joel Souza’s shoulder is believed to have been fired from a revolver by Alec Baldwin during a rehearsal of the movie. Photo by Andres Leighton/AP

An attorney for Mr. Kenney didn’t comment on the releases.

Mr. Bowles has previously said that no one on the set had told Ms. Gutierrez Reed that Mr. Baldwin was doing an impromptu scene rehearsal with the gun, and that she should have been informed so she could have inspected the gun again.

According to a report released last week by state workplace safety inspectors, Ms. Gutierrez Reed wasn’t given proper authority to determine whether gun training was needed, or time to thoroughly inspect ammunition.

Mary Carmack-Altwies, the district attorney for the Santa Fe area, said in a statement Monday that no decision will be made on criminal charges until the Sheriff’s Office completes its investigation and turns over its findings to her office.

Write to Dan Frosch at dan.frosch@wsj.com, Katherine Sayre at katherine.sayre@wsj.com and Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com

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